4 min read
Bluehost's promo price is real, and underneath its own portal the control panel is plain cPanel, which makes leaving easier than it is from most budget hosts. The catch is the one every host shares: the promo applies to your first term, and the renewal doesn't.
What renewal actually costs
These are Bluehost's own published prices as of September 2026, on the 36-month term:
| Plan | First 36 months | At renewal |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $3.99/mo | $9.99/mo |
| Business | $6.99/mo | $13.99/mo |
| eCommerce Essentials | $14.99/mo | $21.99/mo |
Run the numbers on Starter. Your first bill is $143.64 for three years. The next one, for the same plan with nothing added, is $359.64. Drop to a one-year term at renewal and it's $11.99 a month, so $143.88 buys a single year of what the first $143.64 bought three of. Two smaller charges land around the same time: the domain that came free for the first year renews at $23.99 for a .com, and Bluehost renews it automatically 15 days before it expires. Once a renewal is charged it isn't refundable, so the 15 days before the bill are your window. None of that is a trick. It's how promo pricing works. If you'd happily have paid these numbers on day one, stay. If not, here's how to leave without breaking anything.
First, untangle what you actually have there
- Your website lives in cPanel, behind Bluehost's own portal (Websites, then Manage Site).
That's good news: a cPanel backup is a standard format that any cPanel host can read. One thing
does change on the way out. Database names and users carry your cPanel username as a prefix, so
they'll differ on the new account, and the connection settings in
wp-config.phpget edited as part of the move. - Your email is one of three things: mailboxes on the hosting server, Bluehost's Professional Email, or Google Workspace bought through Bluehost. Only the first lives with your site, and even that moves as a separate job. Bluehost's own price list says as much: its paid migration is $149.99 per website, email not included, with mailboxes at $99 each on top. Count yours before you start.
- Your domain was probably free for the first year. To move it you unlock it and request the authorization code under Domains, then Move & Access. The code goes to the registrant's email address, which may not be the one on your account, and can take up to 24 hours to arrive.
One note on builders. Bluehost's current website builder is WordPress underneath, so it moves like any other WordPress site, unlike Hostinger's. An older Weebly site from Bluehost's earlier builder is a rebuild: Bluehost has dropped Weebly and points those customers at WordPress too.
The order that works
Same five steps as the rest of the series. The no-downtime walkthrough explains the mechanics behind each one.
- Download your own full backup. Bluehost's included backup is weekly, with one restore point that each new one overwrites, so it's a rollback, not an archive. In cPanel go to Files, then Backup, then Download a Full Account Backup. Your own copy costs nothing, even if the new host does the whole move.
- Move the website first. The new host builds a working copy while your Bluehost site stays live, so visitors keep landing on a working site throughout. We do this on every plan, free, mailboxes and forwarders included.
- Test the copy. Click through your pages, log in to your admin area, send yourself a test email from the new mailboxes.
- Point your domain at the new site. The change takes a little while to reach everyone, so keep the old hosting active for a few days as a safety net.
- Move the domain last, or not at all. Your site runs fine with the domain still registered at Bluehost. If you do move it, three 60-day rules apply, and all three come from ICANN's transfer policy rather than from Bluehost: no transfer within 60 days of registration, none within 60 days of a previous transfer, and a change to the registrant's name or organization starts a fresh 60-day lock unless you opted out beforehand. So don't tidy up the contact details first.
Before you cancel
Turn off auto-renew in the Renewal Center for the hosting and, separately, for the domain, which renews on its own 15 days early. Canceling the hosting suspends the website and any email on it, and Bluehost says data erased from the server cannot be recovered, so the backup from step 1 is the copy you keep. Then look for stragglers: mailboxes still receiving mail, addon domains, an SSL certificate you paid for separately.
The lazy option
Steps 1 through 4 are things we do for you, free, on any plan. You hand us your Bluehost login or a backup, we build the copy, you approve it, we flip the switch. If your email turns out to be Google Workspace or Professional Email rather than on the server, we'll say so before we start, not after. Start here.